Unearthed – Week 49
New releases
It’s a great week for fans of dark underground music: a lot of new records have just dropped. I haven’t had time to listen to everything from start to finish yet, but I’ll do my best to pull together our usual weekly list of recommendations.
First up is Subsystem Decay from Kristof Bathory & Blakmoth. If you’re into dark sci-fi atmospheres, rich analog drones, and deep cinematic pads, this one won’t let you down. Easily one of my favourites this week.
Ritual ambient releases are relatively rare, so they’re always welcome here. The latest is Oastar by O Saala Sakraal. Built on drones, choirs, and drums, it “weaves six aural ceremonies designed to open liminal sonic spaces where the residual wounds of Christian dominion may begin to heal,” as the Bandcamp page describes it.
Slow, melancholic themes blended with distorted feedback and noise form the backbone of Birds Drink My Blood from Born Erased. It’s punctuated by aggressive percussion, creating a record that ticks all the boxes for ambient, drone, industrial, and noise.
It’s an especially good week for ritual ambient fans, as there’s another release on the list. Ring of Spheres by Wolfskin runs for over an hour, and with very little time on my hands I couldn’t make it through the full record — so I’ll quote the Bandcamp page instead: “The album unfolds as an extended act of meditation and initiation. The gongs act as both instrument and symbol: circular, radiant, resonant, their sound waves describing the eternal cycles of creation and dissolution. Electronic textures weave through them like invisible currents, mapping a vast stellar architecture of sound.”
Beyond the Mountains of Sorrow from Rojinski moves from a beautiful, melancholic opening into a more sombre ending, holding onto the atmospheric sound you’d expect from him all the way through. The album is free to download on Bandcamp.
Above the Polar Vortex is a new release from Dronny Darko — should I say more? Even if I should, I unfortunately can’t yet; at around 90 minutes, it’s another album I haven’t managed to finish. But you should (and I will too, once exams are out of the way).
Let’s move on to a more aggressive record. F1RST°DEGREE by FABRIKER [101] is heavy, industrial, harsh, and unnerving. Just what you need if you’ve been missing the industrial reviews in Unearthed.
My review of Relics of Ancient Voices by Torus Dome is a bit late — it came out on November 29 — but I still wanted to include it in this week’s list because it’s a beautiful work. It’s a spiritual, transcendental kind of dark ambient, built on slow-moving soundscapes, subdued drones, and melancholic, choir-like pads. I loved every minute of it.
The last one arrived just as I was wrapping up the reviews: Live at Planetarium Erkrath by Martin Stürtzer is a dark/space ambient release recorded live at the planetarium on November 8th, 2025.
Mixtapes
Nacht Radio Show, featuring Ashtoreth & Stratosphere, Desiderii Marginis, Gdanian, ProtoU and others.